Sigourney Weaver Alien Isolation interview – ‘it was exciting for me to have a flamethrower’

Over the years we’ve interviewed many of the great and the good of the video games industry, from company presidents to gaming’s most talented creatives. But until now we’ve never come close to experiencing the peculiar mix of fear and excitement that is being truly starstruck.

Unlike the average game developer we don’t have to explain who Sigourney Weaver is or what she’s best know for. Through movies such as Aliens and Ghostbusters her work has had a considerable influence on the video games industry at large, although apart from a voice over in the forgettable Avatar tie-in she’s never worked directly in video games before.

But now she’s lending her likeness to Alien Isolation and has recorded brand new dialogue for the game’s bonus content, which sees her and the rest of the movie cast recreating the original movie’s most suspenseful scenes.

And yet despite having no special interest in games herself she proved to be impressively well informed about the industry and spoke very sensibly – more so than many an exec we’ve spoken to – about everything from virtual violence to the need for greater variety in video games…

GC: You might notice I’m completely starstruck, but thankfully everyone else is too. The first guy just came out [into the corridor where we were waiting] saying his hands were still shaking but it’s okay, because you’re ‘really nice’.

SW: [laughs] I fooled you all!

GC: The problem we have, or at least most of us, is that we only usually speak to fellow nerds. Even though your nickname is the ‘Queen of Sci-Fi’ I don’t get the impression that’s how you see yourself. But what does attract you to all these genre films?

SW: You know, I don’t really think I have done that much sci-fi work. But I’ve done the right sci-fi work. [laughs] Because I think I’ve made about 40 films and only a few of them have been science fiction, five really. Because I don’t really count Galaxy Quest, as it’s basically a comedy. So I’ve done five and I guess, you know, I picked a good five.

But what I think is interesting to most people about science fiction is… I think it’s Jim Cameron who once said that science fiction is the exploration of what it’s like to be human. And I think that’s something that’d very interesting to people now that technology looms larger and larger in our lives.

And I also think it’s fun, I think it’s fun for me because it’s not a clichéd – well I guess it is potentially a clichéd area – but I’ve been working with such good directors that I’ve kinda of been able to sidestep some of the… some of the things I’m not so crazy about in science fiction.

GC: Well of course in movie terms sci-fi just means anything with a spaceship in it, but good science fiction is always far more about exploring and exaggerating the world as it is now – rather than a literal prediction of how things are going to be in the future.

SW: Oh yes.

GC: But the thing I always wonder about a movie star is the idea that your work is essentially going to live forever. Which is a very sci-fi kind of concept really. The idea that in hundreds of years people are still going to be watching your performance n Alien…

SW: Really, do you think? [laughs]

GC: Well they’re watching it 35 years later, so why not? When and why would they stop? If the ideas are strong, if the characters are strong…

Sigourney Weaver is now 64, she looked amazing

SW: Well, and the camera work is still very much, you know… at a time when no one was really doing handheld… it really does put you in that world, and I think that’s one reason why the game is a fantastic leap into another story based on it. But the gaming part of it gives you that feeling of being in that claustrophobic world.

GC: The game is also a great example of what will presumably become commonplace in the future, where the likeness of actors will be recreated as they were in their youth. So give it a few more years and you could be appearing in Alien 5…

SW: That’s right! I wouldn’t even have to leave my room!

GC: It seems inevitable. I don’t know how you feel about the likeness in the game, but it seems pretty good to me…

SW: I think what they’ve achieved is amazing. You accept… I like the fact that it still feels different from the movie. There’s a great verisimilitude in the worlds, but you can become these other people and enhance them, as it were, with your presence when you game. It’s still very different from a movie. I’m glad it’s not too real because I’m not sure I’d want to go into that ship…

GC: So how aware were you of video games, before becoming involved in this. What’s your general view of them?

SW: Well, you know, we had Grand Theft Auto and a few other things but I think what’s exciting to me is that I… I understand, for me – not as the actor but as the person – I love the idea of entering into a world that I really don’t know much about, that I have no real control over, that I actually get to be there. As a spectator I think that would be exciting.

There are many things I’d like to do that I won’t actually be able to do. So gaming gives me an opportunity to do that, and since I’m much more story-orientated than shoot ’em-up orientated I feel like gaming can just expand to satisfy so many different appetites, just the way television did and movies have.

Because there’s so many different kinds of people out there who want maybe a historical experience, an emotional experience, you know… we could go shopping in Paris, you could go into the world of Dostoyevsky, you could go back to Tsarist Russia, there’s so many different ways the gaming industry could express itself and I think…

GC: Wow, I wish you were a video games exec.

SW: [laughs] Well, but this I think is a departure. And I think… my husband [Jim Simpson] just directed a play with Alan Rickman which they want to turn into a video game. So I think they’re recognising that not everyone wants to go and just do target practice.

That we want to escape from our worlds, our lives, into another world, at home, and be somewhat in control and participatory in it. But it’s a much bigger spectrum than just army or James Bond or what have you.

GC: As I understood it you were a little uncomfortable with the prominent use of guns in Aliens?

SW: Well, I was working for gun control, I’m still a fan of gun control, I think I had done two other films right in a row and I just think I’d skipped some vital stage directions, so I was just surprised, really surprised, by how much… firepower there was in Aliens. It’s very true to Jim Cameron…

GC: Of course in context it makes sense, but Aliens in particular is probably one of the most influential movies ever in terms of video games.

SW: That’s what I’ve heard, yeah. That’s what I’ve heard.

GC: So you’re not uncomfortable with that at all?

SW: I’d rather people got it out of their systems at home, you know? And I have to say it was exciting for me, in the little tiny bit I did of the part of the game that I’m in, to have a flamethrower and to be able to use it.

GC: [laughs]

SW: It’s a very cool experience.

GC: Well, not for whoever you’re pointing it at.

SW: [laughs]

GC: By coincidence, one of the big debates in gaming at the moment is the role of women in games. I wonder what your feelings are on that, considering how Ripley is still the quintessential female action protagonist?

SW: I think there’s a huge market for women that hasn’t begun to be tapped.

GC: From a statistical point of view women play games just as much as men. But there tends to be two standard types of female character, with one being female only in terms of looks and voice over – but using the same dialogue as a man. Which I think is essentially how Ripley came about in the first film wasn’t it?

SW: You know the very original script, that the producers bought, by Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett was about, I think, nine guys and the only thing really that they took from it was the chestburster scene. And when it came to writing this very beautiful, spare script I think it wasn’t out of some great feminist urge that they made Ripley the survivor; but they just though that nobody will ever think that this young woman could end up being the survivor – it’s really supposed to be John Hurt’s character that looked like the real hero.

And what I appreciate about the way they wrote it, and the way that Ridley directed it and conceived of it really, was that she wasn’t a girl, she was a person trying to make sense of this horrific situation – going from someone who thought that things were like this and having to become in a sense a very instinctive person by the end of it, an animal by the end of it. Just to survive.

And I think that’s a kind of arc that a lot of people can understand and… so I think I was very lucky that nobody tried to make a Ripley a ‘woman’, sympathetic or all that bull****. I hate it when they talk about that stuff. People really aren’t worrying about that when they’re ‘in life’, you know?

GC: And yet in Aliens the character was written specifically as a woman, with the relationship with Newt in particular revolving around that fact. But in doing that there’s an obvious danger that the role becomes clichéd or patronising, which I fear is usually the case in video games. But presumably you feel both approaches are suitable in the right context?

SW: I think they’re both valid in the sense that there are so many women in fields that used to be considered only for men. In the army and in engineering, and lots of other fields. I do always think it’s funny when they have some real kickass woman, you know, doing impossible things – just as the men do impossible things in it.

So I think the future will involve more complex characters for men and women, and… I do think they’re hard to write, hard to conceive of, hard to conceive games about, but I think that’s what the next generation will relate to. That we don’t want constant conflict, we want an experience where you have to think and you have to decide and it’s not just your reflexes it’s your whole being.

Alien Isolation – and of course the xenomorph is back as well

GC: I’m reminded of an interview I did with a developer and, it was quite an obscure game [Remember Me – GC], but the lead character was female. And when I asked him why he said that making the protagonist a woman was the only way he could give them a broader emotional range and have it be accepted.

SW: That is a sad state of affairs!

GC: On the one hand it was good that he was trying, but it’s a pretty damning indictment of the state of mainstream gaming – and probably the entertainment medium at large.

SW: Yeah, and I think not really the sign of an experienced person, you know. So, I don’t know what the answer is to that. I think it’s the same problem in film… more and more there are interesting characters appearing in television and things like that, and occasionally in film, but it’s hard to come up with interesting characters in a lot of these ‘genre’ pictures. And also to write them with some kind of originality and style and veracity. It always seems hard for writers to do that and it’s just as hard in gaming.

GC: Do you think attitudes have been changing quickly enough since you made Alien? As you say, for both male and female characters there’s still a resistance to portraying them as human beings rather than just ruthless killing machines – in both games and movies.

SW: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s a whole area where we can go. I think it’s… it’s hard not to do what has worked before. But what’s exciting about these fields is to go into areas which are a little more risky. And I certainly think that character development is one of those.

And it will be more interesting to play a game with a full character than someone who’s just a uniform or who’s just a job. I think it will be much more enriching, and by the end all of us will just spend all of our time playing video games. It’ll be so satisfying we’ll never get anything done!

GC: [laughs] Is that your sci-fi prediction of the future?

SW: I think so. And then the planet will be invaded by aliens from outer space and we won’t even know!

Both: [laughs]

SW: When they come in the door we’ll turn our Xbox on them and [makes noise of machinegun.]

GC: Well in a sense that’s exactly what is happening. Because Facebook are buying Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset I mentioned earlier, and they’re trying to get everyone hooked up to that. So you’ve been proven right all ready! Well, except for the alien invasion bit.

SW: [laughs] Well, there you go. I hope that we can be optimistic. It’s fun to talk about.